Rogue Corn On the Loose

Risking
Corn, Risking Culture

If genetically modified corn spreads around the planet, one
of humanity's greatest creations-a highly diversified and reliable food
source-could be severely weakened or even destroyed. So could many of the human
communities that depend on it.

Capulalpam,
Sierra Madre de Oaxaca, Mexico

Here
in the remote mountains of Oaxaca, one of the oldest stories on earth-the vital
relationship between people and plants-is taking a dramatic turn. Corn was
first domesticated here and in nearby areas of Mesoamerica, from wild grasses
about 8,000 years ago. Native varieties of corn are still grown here by the
descendants of those first farmers. Now, this place, the center of origin of
corn, and the center of its genetic heritage and diversity, has also become the
center of a welling controversy over the finding of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) in the native corn.

The land itself helps tell the story. The road from the
valley city of Oaxaca to the small mountain village of Capulalpam weaves
through a rich mosaic of ecosystems. It climbs through evergreen pine-oak
forests, crosses the Continental Divide as it transects the Sierra Juarez,
drops down through a semi-arid zone of manzanita and shrub, and overlooks the
Mexican Rio Grande, which winds along a sandy riverbed studded with agave and
nopal. The profuse flora, the abundant wildlife, and the clear water that flows
through these mountains, known locally as the Sierra Norte, support some of the
world's most treasured biodiversity.

As the road turns towards the mountain range, small towns
carved out of the deep green forest glisten in the sun like jewels strung along
the mountainsides. Most of the people who live here are Zapotec. They place a
high value on cleanliness and beauty. Their villages fit harmoniously into the
topography and feature colonial-style churches and scattered houses made of
wood from their forests. Household gardens and milpa growing corn, beans, and
squash are nearby. Each town is surrounded by communal fields, which are in
turn surrounded by communal forests. These concentric circles of resource use
and cultivation are collectively managed. The Zapotec call themselves the
"people of the clouds," and for the entire day, even under a bright blue sky, a
thick mantle of white fog clings to the wooded ridge tops.

Dr. Ignacio Chapela is one of two scientists from the
University of California, Berkeley who documented the discovery of transgenes
in the Mexican native, or criollo, corn grown here. Chapela and his colleague,
David Quist, took their samples from Capulalpam, so this remote village is
getting more than its fair share of visitors these days. Chapela has worked
with the communities in the Sierra Norte for years, but he had not returned to
Capulalpam since November 2001, when his report was published in the
prestigious journal Nature. I went back to Capulalpam with Dr. Chapela, to talk
with farmers and village officials about the impact that transgenic corn is
having on their lives, and to explore what it might mean for the rich
biodiversity and indigenous cultures of the region.

The Chapela/Quist discovery is the first report of GMO
contamination of a major crop at its center of origin. A center of origin
contains the early forms of a crop and its wild relatives. It is the gene bank
the world depends on to improve and refresh a crop's genetics. Mexico's native
corn varieties are a treasure chest of genes useful for breeding plants that
can adjust to changing climate, agricultural, and nutritional needs. Scientists
worry that if these plants become infected with GMOs, and if the artificial
genes persist, they could dangerously contaminate, and possibly wipe out, the
natural genetic basis of the world's most important crops. Although they are
manufactured, GMOs are living organisms, capable of reproduction. Once
released, they are beyond human control. They are a new form of pollution, one
that is difficult to detect and completely invisible. Because so little is
known, their release is an uncontrolled experiment, which the biochemist Erwin
Chargaff, known as the father of molecular biology, has said would constitute
"an irreversible attack on the biosphere."

For years, scientists and environmental activists have been
warning the Mexican government that GMOs in imported corn could harm Mexico's
exceptionally rich biological and cultural diversity. The known risks of GMOs
include the creation of hard-to-control weedy relatives of crops through
"crop-to-wild hybridization," the development of insect pests or weeds that are
resistant to the chemicals used with GMO crops, and the unintentional poisoning
of beneficial insects and non-target species (see ∂).

No one knows how GMOs got to Capulalpam. It's suspected that
they arrived, courtesy of the Mexican government and the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in shipments of imported corn sold here for human
consumption. Corn samples taken from the government-subsidized Diconsa store in
Capulalpam tested positive for GMOs. A few local farmers, who were not aware
that the imported corn contained GMOs, may have used the store-bought corn for
seed.

Mexico, which banned the commercial planting of transgenic
corn in 1998, imports about 6.2 million tons of corn a year, mostly from the
United States. About a quarter of the U.S. commercial corn crop is GMO, and
after harvest it is mixed with conventional corn. As a result, all conventional
U.S. corn is now considered to contain at least a low level of "background"
GMOs. And unlike Japan, Mexico does not require that GMO corn from the United
States be segregated and labeled.

It was entirely predictable that GMOs in imported corn would
find their way into Mexico's own cornfields. Corn is, after all, practically
promiscuous in the way it spreads its pollen around, and corn farmers love to
experiment with corn seed. What we call corn today owes its very existence to
the intentional and accidental recombination of varieties by corn farmers. So
it was only a matter of time before the foreign genes in the imported corn
would get out and mix with the locals. If there was any surprise in this
finding, it was how rapidly the GMOs had traveled to such a remote region. What
is most alarming about this finding is that such rapid dissemination is
occurring at a time when so little is known about how these transgenes will
affect the ancestral ecosystems and the genetic heritage of the world's major
crops.

Corn is the world's second most important food crop, after
rice. It is practically miraculous in the way it converts sunlight into food.
Corn plants can grow 11 centimeters or more a day, which may explain why
Midwest farmers claim to be able to hear their corn growing (see ∑). But corn's
productive and adaptable nature also makes it particularly susceptible to GMO
contamination. The corn plant reproduces through "open pollination" and it is
in constant communication with its surroundings. As it grows, it evaluates its
environment, senses the available light, moisture, nutrients, and competition,
and then adjusts its height, length of cob, and time of ripening accordingly.
Boone Hallberg, one of the world's experts on corn varieties, says that because
of corn's adaptability, the Oaxaca region alone boasts up to 85,000 unique
strains, or "sub-varieties" of criollo corn, that have conformed to specific
local conditions.

Hallberg is a deeply tanned, and still spry, transplanted
Californian, who has lived near Capulalpam for over 50 years. He teaches and
conducts research on native corn varieties at the Instituto Technologica in Oaxaca.
Sitting behind a desk piled deep with papers that are weighed down with
colorful ears of corn, he talks at length about how these local "landraces"
developed as corn fine-tuned itself to the diverse "agro-ecological niches" of
the Sierra Norte. These landraces have developed dozens of useful
characteristics. Some have improved nutritional qualities or agronomic values
such as tolerance to acid, alkaline, or saline soils. Some are drought or frost
resistant; others are able to withstand strong winds, or resist pests and plant
diseases. One remarkable variety can even fix its own nitrogen.

How GMOs will affect these specialized landraces, and
thereby impact the world's agricultural genetic diversity, can only be
understood in the context of how perilous the state of the world's crop
diversity currently is. As the late University of Illinois botanist and plant
geneticist Jack Harlan (author of Crops and Man) famously said, the world's
genetic diversity is all that "stands between us and catastrophic starvation on
a scale we cannot imagine. In a very real sense, the future of the human race
rides on these materials." Modern plant breeding programs focus on only a very
few improved crops. The patenting of seeds and the privatization of
agricultural research, which is part and parcel of the development of
transgenic crops, further narrows the genetic basis of our food system. The UN
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 75 percent of the
world's crop genetic diversity has already been lost just in the last century
(see ∏).

Chapela and Quist not only found GMOs in Capulalpam's
criollo corn; they also asked how those genes would behave once they
"introgressed" into the new plants. But just raising this question created an
enormous controversy over their research (see π). Their inquiry challenges one of the
basic assumptions underlying biotechnology: that transgenes are stable.
Although the industry immediately attacked their findings in letters to the
journal Nature, Quist and Chapela stand by their conclusion that the transgenes
they found did not behave predictably. The scientific jury is still out on this
issue, but as a result of this and other controversies, researchers are
increasingly reluctant to conduct studies that might shed light on how
transgenes behave once they are released into the environment.

Norman Ellstrand, Professor of Genetics at the University of
California, Riverside, says that we still do not know how GMOs will behave;
they may be benign, but there is great risk in releasing GMOs prior to
investigating their potential effects. Both Ellstrand and Chapela point out
that the GMOs found in Capulalpam may not be the ones to worry about. While
this discovery indicates that transgenes are not easily contained, both
scientists say the GMOs to watch out for are the ones now being developed for
what is called the "bio-pharming"of crops, such as the use of corn to grow
industrial and medical materials like plastics and pharmaceuticals. There is a
GMO corn, grown in the open, that contains a human contraceptive, (see ∫) and the
U.S. government recently issued a permit to grow corn spliced with a human
gene, used to fight herpes. No one knows the long-term environmental and health
impacts of these GMOs, because the regulatory framework currently in place does
not require industry to find out.

In 1995, Mexico's agricultural research centers convened a
seminar to assess the environmental threats posed by transgenic corn.
Participants included the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center
(CIMMYT), which is the world's most important repository of corn germplasm; the
National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture, and Livestock Research, which is
Mexico's national seed bank; and the National Agricultural Biosafety Committee.
One of the questions discussed was how transgenic corn could cross with
teosinte, the wild relative of corn that grows in Mexico. If GMO corn and
teosinte crossed, it could create a new, transgenic wild-crop hybrid. And if
that new plant had some biological advantage, such as insect resistance from Bt
corn, it could wipe out the wild, natural form that was not resistant, and even
lead to the extinction of natural teosinte. Known as the "lord of corn,"
teosinte is already in danger of extinction due to loss of habitat.

Bt corn is a patented hybrid corn variety that has been
engineered to express a genetically modified form of a natural insecticide,
Bacillus thuringiensis, or "Bt." The GMOs Chapela and Quist found in Capulalpam
are known as "transgenic constructs"-easily identified synthetic vectors, such
as a genetically modified form of the cauliflower mosaic virus, used in making
almost all GMO plants. Most likely, these GMOs came from Bt corn, because most
transgenic corn is Bt corn. And if that were the case, one likely environmental
impact would be harm to Mexico's insect populations. Bt is commonly used as a
conventional insecticidal spray. In its natural form, it stays inactive until
it reaches the gut of a susceptible insect. But transgenic Bt has been genetically
altered to be always active, constantly exuding its poison throughout the life
cycle of the Bt plant. Transgenic Bt is known to injure susceptible beneficial
insects and "non-target species" such as green lacewings, insects that are
highly regarded as a natural pest control. And, when pollen from Bt corn, which
contains active Bt, falls on nearby milkweed plants in the U.S. Midwest, it can
kill or harm any insects or butterflies that feed on it-including the majestic
Monarch butterfly that migrates between the Midwest and Mexico.

Corn reproduces in a marvelous, messy, affair that dusts
everything around it with pollen (see ª). The tassels at the top of the giant stalk, the
male parts, can produce as many as 25 million grains of pollen. The ears,
usually located midway on the stalk, are the female parts, and the silky hairs
that protrude from the ears collect any pollen that lands on them.
Fertilization takes place when a tiny speck of pollen falls on the silk and
then flows along the strand to a single kernel, which is created from a tiny
embryo at the end of the strand. An ordinary ear of field corn growing in the
Midwest can contain 800 to 1,000 silks, and as many kernels.

Because Bt corn is constantly expressing an insecticide,
everything around it is exposed to Bt. As a result of this overexposure,
insects will eventually develop resistance to Bt. When that happens even the
natural forms of Bt will lose their effectiveness, causing serious economic
losses to organic and conventional farmers worldwide. And transgenic Bt, being
always active, continually affects its surroundings, including the soil. The
countless microorganisms living in the soil are affected both by the Bt in the
plant's roots while it is alive and by any plant residues that remain in the soil
after harvest. Characteristically, farmers in Capulalpam leave their dried corn
stalks standing in their fields after harvest, so any transgenic Bt in their
corn would be available to their insect populations, and their soil
environment, for most of the year.

Whether or not the GMOs found in Capulalpam will have these
effects is still unknown. But the farmers I spoke to there said they'd heard
that GMO corn could harm butterflies, and they worried about how it would
affect their land, and their criollo corn. I met Señora Olga Toro Maldonado,
one of the farmers in Capulalpam whose fields tested positive for GMOs. She
stood in a field of dried corn stalks, dressed in a starched white shirt, blue
denim pants, and straw fedora. Her skin matched the color of the golden leaves
behind her. She gestured with her strong hands as she asked: how were they
supposed to know, since the government said people could eat the corn sold in
the Diconsa stores, that it should not be planted? She expressed dismay about
the lack of information the village was getting. For now, she said, she was
mostly concerned about feeding this transgenic corn to her six children.

Maldonado's neighbor, Señor Naum Sanchez Santiago, carefully
saves his best corn from each harvest to use as seed. He farms without using
chemicals and says he saves seed because that way he isn't dependent on outside
sources. It's like "tucking away savings" every year, he said. He noted,
proudly, that these practices keep his community independent. He pointed out that,
so far, his cornfields were still free of GMOs. But he and his neighbors were
worried. Señor Javier Cosmes Perez, the mayor of Capulalpam, and also a farmer,
said that the situation here is very grave. "Our customs are being violated,"
he said. "It upsets us because it has to do with our traditions, the very
essence of our people and our lives, our corn."

The farmers and village officials I talked to were
especially anxious about the economic consequences of GMO corn. Santiago said
corn in the village Diconsa store sold for four or five pesos a kilogram, while
it cost him six to seven pesos a kilogram to grow his own varieties. These
farmers are among Mexico's 3 million family farmers who feed 15 million of the
country's rural poor. But they simply can't compete with the heavily subsidized
price of U.S. corn. Under NAFTA, Mexico ended price supports and subsidies for
its farmers. TheUnited States, however, under the most recent farm bill, will
be paying its commodity producers $180 billion over the next 6 years. GMOs are
part of this subsidized commodity system. The resulting overproduction means
that farmers in the United States get rock-bottom prices, while poor farmers in
other countries get cut out of the market. Santiago and Maldonado pointed to some
bare patches of ground on the hillsides behind them. They said those fields
were abandoned because of the rising costs of growing their local criollo corn.

Still, millions of rural Mexican farmers continue to grow
criollo corn varieties. While providing for themselves and their communities,
these farmers also act as efficient custodians of corn's genetic diversity. But
their contribution to the world's agricultural heritage is not being
recognized, or rewarded. And no government action has been taken to protect
them. Since NAFTA took effect, imports of corn from the United States have
increased 18-fold. Mexico's agribusinesses, mostly transnational corporations,
support these imports because they provide them with cheap corn for animal feed
and food processing. They either turn a blind eye to the implications of the
GMOs in their imports or they are outright supporters of biotechnology because
it is part of the industrial agricultural system that keeps their prices low
(see º).

When NAFTA took effect, instead of helping traditional
farmers convert to its terms, which provided for a 15-year transition, Mexico
accelerated that into a 3-year period. The reaction of the rural Mexican
farmers, according to NAFTA expert Alejandro Nadal, was not what the government
had expected. In areas already deeply scarred by poverty, local farmers
suddenly had to sell their crops at a buyer's market, flooded with cheap
imports. If they stayed and tried to subsist, they were forced to grow more
crops on increasingly marginal land, with fewer resources. Nadal says that
without some effort to strengthen their social institutions, and outside
assistance to maintain a more sustainable livelihood, these communities will
only deteriorate and the harm to the environment from soil erosion and
deforestation will only worsen.

When these poor rural farmers can no longer farm, they leave
their communities to find work in overcrowded urban areas like Mexico City or
at a maquiladora factory (see Ω). Or they join the "migrant trail" to find work in
the United States, sending money home to support their families. Many rural
Mexican communities, including some in the Sierra Norte, are becoming dependent
on this income. Remittances back to Mexico from migrant workers in the United
States amounted to more than $9 billion last year, second only to oil, and
surpassing tourism in earnings that support Mexico's economy. But as
traditional farming collapses in rural Mexico, native corn varieties, and the
world's corn diversity, also disappear.

Village officials in the Sierra Norte are concerned that,
because of their precarious economic condition, imported GMO corn may well be
what brings an end to their self-sustaining land-based traditions. Señor Miguel
Ramirel Dominguez, the local agrarian authority, feels that outside interests
want to control them, because if they lose their local criollo corn varieties,
they lose their independence. These communities have withstood successive
invasions over time as outsiders repeatedly exploited their hard working labor
force and their rich natural resources. But after the extractive industries
exhausted their mines, and their forests, at least the local people could
return to farming. Now the question is, will they be able to continue to work
the land in the face of the economic and environmental impacts of imported GMO
corn?

Mexico's Ministry of Agriculture has responded to the crisis
by continuing to encourage corn imports, without restrictions. Mexico's
Assistant Secretary of Agriculture at the time of the Nature publication, Dr.
Victor Manuel Villalobos, was quoted as saying that GMOs are not a threat to
Mexico's corn because they are "just another hybrid." Mexico's Minister of
Agriculture, Javier Usabiaga, has been even more cavalier, saying that ‘a
farmer who cannot survive in the 21st century is simply ‘going to have to find
another job."

The plight of the farmers in the Sierra Norte was discussed
during a meeting held in February 2002 at Oaxaca's Ethnobotanical Garden. The
Garden, located in a renovated convent behind Oaxaca's Santo Domingo Cultural
Center, invited scientists, representatives of NGOs, government officials, and
academics, including Dr. Chapela, to discuss the impacts of transgenic corn on
Mexico's rich biological heritage and its genetic and cultural diversity.
Representatives of Mexico's Secretariat of the Environment and Natural
Resources (SEMARNAT) began the meeting with a report that confirmed and
expanded on the Chapela/Quist study. Their results, from cornfields in the
states of Oaxaca and nearby Puebla, indicated that GMO contamination of corn in
Mexico was extensive and growing.

Raul Benet, Executive Director of Greenpeace Mexico,
repeated his organization's demand for a ban on GMO imports, for completely
eradicating the contamination from rural areas, for protecting the natural
genetic diversity of corn, and for supporting the livelihood of the peasant
farmers who grow it. One scientist said GMOs should be stopped at the border.
Another proposed tracing GMOs by putting genetic identification tags on them.
The National Commission on Biodiversity (CONABIO), whose mandate is to protect
Mexico's biodiversity, proposed a system for monitoring and assessing the
contamination.

The international seed banks, which are responsible for
preserving the world's endangered genetic resources, were not at the meeting.
So far, CIMMYT has reacted somewhat defensively to the GMO contamination,
issuing press releases assuring that its seed banks are not contaminated.
However, CIMMYT conducts biotechnology research on corn and wheat, and an
increasing amount of its funding comes from biotechnology related companies and
their foundations. I visited their laboratories outside Mexico City and was
able to see the biohazard bags that covered GMO corn tassels through the glass
of their secure biotech greenhouses. The building that houses their invaluable
seed collection is right next-door. I asked CIMMYT about their bio-safety
protocols and was assured that they were "state of the art," but I was unable
to obtain a copy of them because, their spokesperson said, they were currently
being revised.

While CIMMYT appears to be taking every known precaution at
their Mexico facility, they have not addressed some basic questions, such as
what will happen when they grow their seed collections out in the field. This
is a necessary part of maintaining any seed collection that is held apart from
the place where it was grown and collected. Such "ex-situ" collections are held
by CIMMYT and its Mexican counterpart, INIFAP. Seed collections that are
preserved in place, and cared for where they are traditionally grown, are
called "in situ" collections. They have the added advantage of protecting local
ecosystems, the traditional knowledge systems, and the cultural practices that
maintain these local varieties.

The culture of corn is the key to its nature. During my
trip, I came to understand that corn, more than any other crop, embodies the
life-giving and ancient relationship between people, plants, and place.
Certainly, corn has brought great wealth to both ancient and modern societies.
At the same time, corn depends on people to care for it and release its densely
packed kernels from the cob so it can reproduce. After the meeting at Oaxaca's
Ethnobotanical Garden ended, I walked around the specimen collection with the
Garden's Director, Alejandro de Avila, and asked him about the cultural meaning
of corn. "Corn," he said, "is the living mediator between land and people."

Traditional native peoples of the Americas, past and
present, view corn as a regenerative force that constantly reconnects them to
the cycle of life and death, to their land, and to their communities. The
ancient Maya considered themselves-as do their descendants today-to be a people
who are made of corn. Corn is central to many contemporary native cultures in
the Americas, and their corn creation myths offer some intriguing stories about
its origins. Some of these stories are strikingly similar, with various
versions telling how corn was given to humans as a gift from a divine source,
usually in response to some need or severe hunger. But always, the gift of corn
came with strict instructions about the human responsibilities and the
reciprocal efforts that would be required to ensure its constant replenishment.

In the Sierra Norte the farmers take their reciprocal
responsibility to corn seriously. Roberto Gonzalez, an anthropologist and
author of Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca,
says it's common for people here to say, "Maize has a heart." (Maize is the
word most of the world uses to refer to corn.) This saying has some biological
accuracy. Corn kernels do have a nucleus, or heart, from which the seeds
germinate. But, Gonzalez says, the villagers use the term "heart" in the moral
sense, as they view corn as "a wonderful plant-person with a long memory, a
strict moral code, and an unshakable will." He is emphatic that corn always
"prescribes reciprocity." In areas where there are constant land conflicts, for
instance, this reciprocity provides a means of binding communities together
through market transactions, cultural traditions, and seed exchanges. "Thus
maize is not only an economic good but a medium through which certain social
and moral obligations and responsibilities, particularly reciprocity (toward
kin, neighbors, poorer villagers, and people in neighboring villages) must be
met."

The Zapotec communities in the Sierra Norte understand that
if they maintain corn, it will maintain them. To the Zapotec, the concept of
mantenimiento, or maintenance, which includes responsibility and reciprocity,
is crucial. The Zapotec have a system of community work responsibility, or
tequio, that keeps their roads free of trash and their communities immaculate.
Reciprocity is also part of the practice of gozona, a mutual aid arrangement
whereby favors and services are freely exchanged. This system underlies the
practice of saving and exchanging corn seed, which is essential to preserving
corn's genetic diversity. But that will end when biotechnology companies forbid
these farmers from saving any seed contaminated with their patented GMOs.
Mexican corn farmers will have to buy their seeds from agrochemical companies
every year, just as corn farmers in the United States now do. The coming of GMO
corn, then, brings with it the potential for a profound cultural
transformation, as well as an end to the conservation of local varieties.

The more than 20,000 distinct varieties of corn still being
grown in Mexico and Central America are the legacy of these ancient and
sophisticated traditions. Gonzalez says that corn's remarkable diversity can be
attributed to the intense emotional and cultural significance that corn has for
indigenous farmers. Because they love and respect this "plant-person," he says,
they spend more time caring for it, helping it adapt to special ecological
niches. Not surprisingly, corn has been called "the most remarkable plant
breeding accomplishment of all time." When Columbus arrived in the Americas, says
Walton Galinat in Maize: Gift from America's First Peoples, he failed to
recognize that "this plant, developed by peoples he judged poor and
uncivilized, far outstripped in productivity any of the cereals bred by Old
World farmers-wheat, rice, sorghum,
barley, and rye." And, he said, "Columbus did not realize that the gift of
maize was far more valuable than the spices or gold he hoped to find."

In this current clash of cultures, what could industrialized
agriculture learn from traditional corn cultures? The answer lies in the fact
that corn reflects the values of the peoples who grow it. Because corn is so
adaptable, it becomes what farmers want it to be. In the United States,
commodity farmers want corn to be extremely productive and uniform, and so it
is. In 1921 the average U.S. yield was about 28 bushels an acre. By 2001, the
average yield was 138 bushels an acre. Some top producers could boast yields of
over 300 bushels, although this kind of productivity is only achieved by adding
enormous amounts of energy in the form of fertilizers and other chemicals. It
could be said, then, that GMOs, with their commercial utility, uniformity, and
privatized genes, are simply a product of an industrial culture that sees corn
as little more than a biological machine, reflecting a culture that values efficient
productivity and profitability while fostering farmer dependence on a handful
of commercial hybrids.

The traditional farmers of the Sierra Norte, on the other
hand, value genetic diversity and independence. They see corn in its ecological
context, as a living thing, linked to the environment and to the health of all
who depend on it for food. They need corn to grow productively under various
stressful conditions. And so it does. These farmers may get lower yields than
industrial farmers do, but they do not use vast amounts of chemical inputs, and
they are free to save and freely exchange their seed. As a result, they have
been able to maintain a high degree of autonomy while sustaining their
land-based cultures. That, the village officials in Capulalpam said, is their
highest value. And for them, that has been corn's greatest gift. And, Señora
Maldonado said, that was why, despite all of her worries, she was going to keep
on planting criollo corn.

Science supports both the industrial and the traditional
views. Unfortunately, in the case of agricultural biotechnology, science has
been hijacked by technology, a commercial technology that does not take into
consideration the social, environmental or cultural impacts of its products.
The biotechnology industry says the GMOs found in the Sierra Norte pose no
threat. This opinion is based on their belief, codified into the regulations
governing GMOs by industry lobbyists, that transgenes are "substantially
equivalent" to conventional genes. This highly reductionist-and widely questioned-view of molecular biology holds that a
transgene is just like any other gene.

This uncritical acceptance of GMOs has now opened the door
for the transgenic contamination of all the world's major crops at their
centers of origin. Next it may be rice or soybeans in Asia, cotton or potatoes
in South America, or other cereals, like wheat, in Europe. Then there may be
genetically engineered fish, trees, insects, and other organisms now being
developed. All of this is supposedly the best of what American industrial
agriculture has to offer the world, but many countries outside the United
States are beginning to oppose the onslaught of GMOs. As we drove through the
Sierra Norte, I asked Dr. Chapela what he thought about the proliferation of
GMOs. He said part of the answer could be found in the place where transgenes
were first found-here, in the nearby village of Trinidad.

We arrived in Trinidad late in the day, just as the last
rays of light were slipping off the treetops. The sound of church bells and a
choir singing drifted out over the tiny valley. Twinkling lights appeared,
giving Trinidad a magical feeling. This little slice of heaven is the last
place on Earth you'd expect to find a genetics laboratory. But upstairs in
Trinidad's small municipal building, which is painted a persimmon color, is a
small, tidy laboratory run by an indigenous organization, called the Union of
Zapatecos and Chiantecos (UZACHI.)

Trinidad, a former mining town, has been struggling to find
sustainable ways to live, while preserving local forests. Chapela, who is
Mexican, started the lab in the mid-1990s when he was working for the Swiss
pharmaceutical company, Sandoz, now Syngenta. At the time, Sandoz was
prospecting for medicinal plants, a practice Chapela now rejects as
"bio-piracy." Chapela later helped convert the lab into a locally managed
operation that produced mushrooms as a community development project. It was
here that the first evidence of the GMO contamination of criollo corn was
discovered when Chapela's colleague, David Quist, used a local corn variety for
testing some DNA equipment and got a positive result. They thought it was a
mistake, and the lab asked Quist and Chapela to take some samples back to
Berkeley with them for further testing. Confirmation of the results led to the
study published later in Nature.

Lilia Perez, a Zapotec who is now in charge of the UZACHI
lab, showed me around. She described what it was like when she first found out
that transgenic corn had arrived in her tiny town. As she told a friend, John
Ross, author of The War Against Oblivion - eight years with the Zapatista
rebellion in Chiapas, "it felt like an attack on my communities, my people.
Trans-nationals are selling hunger in the Sierra." What is being imported, she
said, along with their transgenics, is "cultural genocide."

Indigenous resistance movements like UZACHI and the Union of
Organizations of the Sierra de Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) are still a powerful
force in Mexico. They are extremely worried about the arrival of transgenics in
their communities. In Chiapas, Ross says, the reaction to the news of GMO corn
has been "tantamount to panic." The indigenous communities in Mexico are doing
what they can, given their limited resources. They are establishing seed banks,
holding conferences, and working with international NGOs that support their
cause. They want a moratorium on the release of GMOs for any purpose, rigorous
studies of their impacts, and support for safeguarding their traditional
varieties and the farmers who grow them. These ancient corn cultures see GMOs
as nothing less than a threat to their cultural survival.

Before leaving Trinidad I walked down a steep cobblestone
street toward a tiny plaza out in front of the only commercial presence in town,
a sparsely stocked Diconsa store. I was following the smell of something
delicious cooking. Under a single light bulb dangling from a wire temporarily
strung through the store window, members of the commune were cooking tacos al
pastor for a small clutch of families out in the cool evening air.

As I waited behind them, I watched a thin crescent moon and
a few stars appear in the deepening sky. I was thinking about how some of the
best food I ever had, smoky salsas and sweet grilled peppers, had been served
by the gracious Zapotec hosts here in the Sierra Norte. I was hungry. When my
turn came, I handed over a few pesos. A smiling woman then handed me a soft
taco on a small paper napkin.

I could feel the weight of it,
warm and oily on my hand. I took a bite. The first flavor was the sharp green
of the chopped cilantro on top, then the fresh sweet onions, and under that,
the salty hot meat. And finally, I tasted the tortilla. It was a deep earthy
color, grainy with nubs of hand-ground corn. It was the taste of life itself in
the Sierra Norte-the soil where the corn had grown, the work of the hands that
did the grinding, and the faith of the countless farmers who have cared for
that corn for so many generations.

Claire Hope Cummings is a Food and
Society Policy Fellow, and food and farming editor at KPFK-FM radio in
Berkeley, California. She has practiced environmental law and has farmed in
both California and Vietnam.